


Seven Dents

by theweddingofthefoxes



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: M/M, Monstrous Transformations, Power Dynamics, Violent Outbursts, ominous relationship, the onyx mine universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 19:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15322728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theweddingofthefoxes/pseuds/theweddingofthefoxes
Summary: A companion piece to The Onyx Mine. Kylo Ren has discovered the ability to transform himself into a hugely powerful monster. But there may be lingering mental effects to doing so--and Hux's love is tested.





	Seven Dents

**Author's Note:**

> This was my piece for the 2017 Kylux Anthology but I figured it was about time I posted it myself! I forgot how much I loved writing this story and how spooky it was. I hope you like the spookiness too!

No one ever told Hux that Kylo Ren was such a gifted storyteller.

He told Hux about the place he went to--he used the word train, but it was unlike any training that Hux had experience with. Hux knew about physical training, about running laps, survival courses, pushup ups, martial arts. He knew about mental training, insults and mind games, favoritism and scorn, sleep deprivation, tolerance of pain. 

All of the above played their part in what it was that Ren did when he went to the planet listed as uninhabited, cordoned off for private use, a place no stormtrooper would ever see, would never even know about.

But this also involved--soul training? Spiritual training?

“When you move on the same wavelength as the Force,” Ren said, “You see beyond the physical. You understand beyond the tangible world. And your true power manifests itself to you in--unique ways.”

They were eating dinner in Hux’s low-lit study. After working hours (weren’t all working hours, the higher up on the ladder you climbed, until you were trembling and swaying at the top, hoping not to slip a rung? It was a question Hux thought about constantly but never very hard, the oppression of the Work he did was breathtaking, even though the Work was So Important), they met to eat. Two types of meat. Two vintages of wine. Hux refilled his glass with the one that he preferred, his silence signaling that Ren should continue. 

This was not the power-play, masked Ren, crisp and cruel, and this was not the primal, lovely Ren that inhabited Hux’s bed. This Ren spoke like a man entranced, entranced by his own words, his own experience, like a man who had stared too deeply into some pretty spiral and could never be coaxed away.

“To me, it manifests as--a cave. No. A mine. The deeper I go, the further from the light of the entrance, the more I can see. Somehow, my eyes have no trouble adjusting to the darkness. And the walls, I can see--they’re studded with black stones, veins of black minerals, shining like liquid, like oil. And I came to the understanding that this mine--was me. My power, my potential. And the stones have been inside me, always, waiting to be pried free...”

“A metaphor,” Hux suggested.

“Yes.”

“What happened next?”

“I realized that my ability to wield power is limitless. The only thing that stands in my way, at least currently, is the weakness of my body.”

That surprised Hux. No one, by any stretch of the imagination, would describe Ren's body as weak. Tall and broad-shouldered, muscled, proportioned as if engineered for destruction (and to be the artist of that particular blueprint, Hux thought, now that would be ecstasy), Ren appeared to be the very definition of strength. Hux ran his finger along the rim of his wineglass, intrigued. “Currently?”

“The body can change, Hux. The body can be trained.” Ren’s eyes met Hux’s, his expression solemn, the way he looked when he spoke to the Supreme Leader. “The body can be transformed.”

Hux set his glass down and picked up his fork and knife, determined to not give any indication that the hairs on his arm were standing up. He sliced off a single mouthful of meat and slowly ate it. Ren’s plate was already clean, except for a brownish-red smear of meaty juices, his silverware scattered now that he was finished with it. 

“Into what, I wonder?” Hux asked, after he had swallowed. 

Ren did not reply. He looked down into his own wineglass like he was divining his future from its depths.

“I want to see,” Hux added. Blunt. He wanted what he wanted, and was not used to being denied. 

Ren smiled. “You will see. I’ll show you. When I--when I can get there. I can’t just turn myself into….”

There they were again, at this same impasse. Hux took another bite. Then another. Did Hux really want to see Ren become something so fully other right here in his study, something trembling with power, knocking his dining table over, making the entire room electric with unbridled Force? 

No. Later. 

“You can decide for yourself when you see,” Ren said decisively, all of a sudden. “When I do show you. Come with me to Rulik-3, Hux, next time I go. You can see everything. Give yourself a few days of requisite time spent off-ship. Doctor up the rhetoric, you do that better than anyone I know, and then come with me. You’ll see what I mean. You can see how….”

Intimidating? Frightening? Bizarre?

“...wonderful it is.”

Hux drained his wineglass and smiled. 

 

It was surprising how well Rulik-3 agreed with Hux, who did not much enjoy being planetside, where he couldn’t choose the exact temperature and humidity for himself. The weather was mild, with light breezes and regular clouds that kept the single sun from beating down too hard. Though there were clusters of rock formations in the hilly landscape, there was no need to hike, or hardly even break a sweat moving from the shuttle towards the edge of a woods. 

Just the two of them. Quaint, almost. A little camping trip, a little weekend away. Hux had imagined that time spent away from the Finalizer would leave him cranky and anxious, but instead, he found himself enjoying the feeling of the natural air ruffling his loose hair, the smell of the grass and rotting leaves. 

“Where did you find this place?”

“The Supreme Leader gave it to me.”

Dimly, Hux wondered if anyone had lived here before Snoke had passed it along to his most worthy knight. He supposed it didn’t matter. Instead, he asked, “Are there beasts living here?”

Ren grinned, teasing, as he led Hux to the entrance of the forest. “Only me, and not on a permanent basis.”

“The most dangerous creature in the woods, I’m sure,” Hux said. 

The only creature in the woods. No birds sang as they walked into the thicket of trees, and no insects screeched. 

“Are you ready to see this?” Ren asked, and there was something so thrilling in the anticipation in his voice. Ren is so proud, Ren wants to let Hux in on this secret.

No one else is worthy of this secret.

 

Within. Ren goes within when he does this.

 

Ren knelt beneath a tree to center himself. Hux stood a short distance away, maybe five paces. Out of respect or out of fear? The two seemed intertwined, inseparable, as he watched the transformation begin. At first, it seemed to be indistinguishable from watching a man just rescued from drowning. Ren’s breaths were becoming longer and deeper, and his knees began to dig into the soft earth beneath him. His arms shook, and his ungloved fingers closed around the dirt. 

“Don’t say anything to me,” Ren had warned him, on their way there. “Just watch. Just stay put.”

The dirty fingers, shaking, clawing at the ground. Hux could not look away. Couldn’t move even if he wanted to.

It took time, but less time than Hux had expected. Ren’s body trembled, and as he pulled himself back up from a kneeling position, it was like his bones were liquid, and he held himself up on all fours with the ease of an animal, but could also stand as easily as a man--? He was not bigger, as far as Hux could tell, but he carried his body differently so he seemed bigger and fiercer and--and everything felt dimmer, like a cloud had passed overhead, as Ren’s body and soul were consumed by this controlled darkness. His eyes had always been dark, dark pupils, dark brown irises, but now there was no white. 

He knew he shouldn’t, but Hux felt his mouth make the sound. “Ren.”

The only beast in the woods. Ren turned to look at him, and then let out a long, low growl. So low that it sounds, absurdly--this is a cliche, but it was really the only comparison that would do--like thunder somewhere far-off, thunder miles away that is moving unstoppably closer, a storm that cannot be outrun. It would be, Hux knew, unbelievably easy for Ren to kill him immediately. He felt almost calm, knowing how little choice he had in the matter. 

And then the beast ran, down the path of the woods, on all fours, somehow all of the human limbs were proportioned for this, Hux realized, swallowing thickly. How--how can he--?

The wind picked up again, playing softly once more with Hux’s hair. It was so pleasant, smelled so good. It only made his unease deeper.

He followed the beast. Ren said it was okay. At a distance. The trail was easy to follow, bare hands, bare feet, the prints mixed up--Hux had never been great at tracking--but it seemed like sometimes, Ren was running on all fours and sometimes on two legs. The distance between the prints varied wildly. Hux tried not to think about it too hard.

The prints stopped below a tree and, feeling the dread wash over him, Hux looked up into the ladder of fat leafy branches. 

There. The beast, Ren, perched like a massive bird of prey, but then climbing on all fours between the branches. Stopping, swaying, meeting Hux’s gaze with his own dark nothing eyes. Ren leapt down from that height, stars, that had to be forty feet--landed on his feet as if he had simply slid down from a barstool. 

Another growl. 

“Ren,” Hux said again. 

The beast circled him, and Hux clenched his jaw, waiting to be judged. He would not show fear. Ren trusted him enough to show him this, and Ren would not hurt him. He would not prove himself unworthy of the secret. Ren came closer, closer, his breath drowning-loud and heavy, still. 

Hux placed a hand on Ren’s head, softly, and the heat coming off Ren was absolutely radiant, scorching hot. 

“Ren.”

Those stickyblack eyes, somehow they saw things in Hux that had never been seen.

 

Everything was recorded, every visit with Ren to see his powers, his new abilities.

This was Hux, after all.

 

_Rulik-3 Observation Report 1: In ‘altered’ state, Ren is capable of running on both two legs and four. He can move with unbelievable agility, both climbing and moving through wooded areas. He is impervious to pain, despite obtaining injuries. However, his bone structure is fluid, changeable, and he seems to suffer no skeletal damage. His body temperature is sharply raised and he burns so much energy so quickly that when he returns to his normal state, he sleeps heavily for nearly twelve hours in order to replenish what has been lost._

_Further observations will be recorded over the course of further visits with Ren…_

 

Further visits. Because of those, and because of getting to observe Ren on the battlefield in his monstrous form, Hux became familiar with the sight of the transformation, and it is as intimate and bizarre as a recurring dream. Ren had mentioned that it was exhausting to do it, so it couldn’t exactly be an everyday event. How beautiful it was to see Ren wiped out! If his monstrous form was a storm that couldn’t be escaped, his deep, bone-weary sleep was the calm afterwards, the gentle scent of the dew. 

How beautiful it was to have Ren sleep like this in his bed.

“Come back with me,” Ren said one night, briefly stirring from his dead sleep long enough to drink water and accept Hux’s hand softly working its way through his hair. “Come back to Rulik-3 with me…”

Surely he knew Hux was making notes, writing about him like a specimen, but evidently, he didn’t care.

“I’ll come back,” Hux said in his hair. “I will.”

He did. Several times.

He saw more. Saw Ren channel his rage into becoming more and more bestial; he could topple trees, he could tear boulders apart. He could resist the bolt of blasters he had set on a timer--he told Hux he didn’t like the idea of being shot at by Hux himself, he might get angry, or confused. His skin grew bloody and seared but he didn’t stop moving, or running, or climbing. He healed more quickly than Hux expected. 

_Ren is the perfect killing machine. Ren is perfect._

“I knew you were the right one to trust,” Ren told Hux the evening before they were due to go back to the Finalizer, lazy, they were in the too-small bed in the shuttle, legs entwined, it was downright sweet. Ren was always so pliant when he came back to himself, after whatever process in his head led him to come back down to the real world. “I knew you could properly appreciate me.”

“You are unique, in all the galaxy,” Hux answered, smiling, brushing some of Ren’s hair from his forehead. “There is no one like you and nothing like you.”

It was the right answer but also the wrong answer. 

Ren closed his eyes, savoring the response. “Armitage. What if we stayed here?”

“Here?”

“On Rulik-3.”

“Ren, listen to yourself.” Hux hated how cross he suddenly sounded, but the concept was just too ridiculous. “Stay on this planet? There’s nothing here.”

“We’re here.”

Hux snorted. “Yes, and what food, besides what we brought? What shelter, besides the shuttle? You’re being unreasonable.” What a romantic fool, Hux decided. If Ren thought this was the right way to woo him, he was sorely mistaken. 

But Ren didn’t look like he was just saying thoughts aloud, spinning idle fantasies. The look on his face was stone-serious, his eyes bright and feverish. 

“Hux, you haven’t even seen all of it. You don’t know about all the resources there are.”

“Even if there were unlimited resources, it doesn’t change the fact I’m needed back on the Finalizer and you’re needed by the Supreme Leader. What in the galaxy is the matter with you?”

Ren sat up, pulling his legs away from Hux’s. “The matter with me? Hux, I’ve been sharing the most important use of the Force with you all this time, I thought you would understand--”

“We can’t stay here, Ren! This is just temporary. What’s the matter with spending time together on the ship?”

“I can’t live freely on the Finalizer like I can here!” Ren’s voice had grown loud and serrated, and if Hux had any doubts before that he was serious, they were gone. “Free, Hux, free from--from structure, from being stifled--”

“Structure is crucial! You want to just live here forever like an animal?”

Ren stood, moving faster than Hux would have imagined, and that should have tipped him off. Began to prowl through the small interior of the shuttle, not looking at Hux. 

“Maybe I do, Armitage,” he said, breathing hard, breathing far too hard for the amount of movement he had just done. “Maybe I do.”

Enough of this.

“Come back here,” Hux snapped, commanding as ever. “You’re being--” 

Still panting, Ren lashed out at the control panel with his fist, cracking it effortlessly.

“Ren!”

Ren turned to look at him, but his body did not move, only his head, swiveling fast, too far, it should not be able to--

His eyes, fully black. 

“Ren,” Hux said again, softer, feeling, just like that first time, like he might be killed right this moment and there was nothing, nothing he could do to stop it. “You don’t want this.”

For a moment, Hux had the wild, desperate hope that his words had gotten through, that Ren really didn’t want this, and that he would blink hard and his breath would slow and his body would cool. But no. Ren sprang forward, away from Hux, instead towards the door, barrelling towards it so hard that it was torn from its hinges with a sudden screech of metal giving way--

And then. Gone. Out into the swelling darkness of the planet, out beyond the treeline, beyond where Hux could see. 

It had happened in a matter of minutes. This is how everything changes, how everything is destroyed. In the blink of an eye. Nobody knew that better than Hux, who had devoted his life to destroying things. 

“Ren,” Hux called as he climbed out of bed, crossing the space between the sleeping space and the door that Ren had ripped free. “Ren!” 

What good did it do to yell for him? Ren wanted to be wild more than he wanted Hux. 

_He could have killed me._

Was that any standard to hold? Hux would have laughed if he wasn’t so unsure of himself, of everything. Was that really a good thing? Still, it was true.

_He doesn’t want you dead. He wants you to live in this paradise that he’s invented. He wants you to bend to his will…_

Was that love? Hux could argue either way, but he didn’t have time for that. He needed to get off this planet, try and get reinforcements to retrieve Ren. And he couldn’t leave for the Finalizer without a door. His options were to either try and fix it himself or call for help. Neither of these options would be fast. 

But he had to try.

 

 

His first course of action was to send a message to the Finalizer, which took far longer to spell out than it would have had Ren not destroyed the panel. _Come send backup. I am sending the coordinates. I have lost Ren._ That ought to get the Supreme Leader invested, he thought, get a rescue shuttle moving. The less he spelled it out, the better -- fewer questions to have to answer later. But that said enough.

Now, the door. Since he’d send out his request for help, and received the barest indication of a response, stars, he just hoped they’d gotten the coordinates he sent correctly, he knew the best plan was to stay put. But he still needed to be able to keep Ren out, as a matter of his own safety.

_He wouldn’t hurt you._

_He might._

_He won’t! He won’t--_

 

“I love you,” Ren had said for the first time, just days earlier. It hadn’t been particularly passionate, when he’d said it, just casual. He was falling asleep, and it had been a simple statement of fact. 

Hux had never said it back. 

 

The door was warped, that was how strong Ren was when he entered this state. The hinges were slanted from the pressure, and this was some of the most advanced durasteel the First Order could buy. Hux chewed on his lip as he squatted down and lifted the door with both hands. Heavy, but manageable. But how in all the hells was he supposed to...

When he turned around, he saw two pinpoints of luminous uncolor shining in the darkness. Whatever light from the moons and stars in the sky was coming down onto them, dim, but enough to reflect off of Ren’s all-black eyes.

Should he call? Call out into the forest?

He tried to straighten as much as possible while still holding the ruined door, tried to pull it back into the frame to the best of his ability. It was like a child’s effort to build a full-sized house out of twigs.

_I love you…_

“I love you too,” Hux said, trying to shoulder the door into place so he could focus on that instead of the tears prickling at his eyes. “I really do.”

_And that’s why I have to keep you out._

His ears were pricked for the sound of the comm response from the Finalizer crew to confirm they were on their way to rescue him.

And maybe shoot Ren like a hunted animal in the process? No, the Supreme Leader would never sanction that, Ren was too precious a pet for that to happen. He knew how this would go. Ren would go spend the most dangerous tantrum in the universe in the woods, tearing apart trees and boulders, and then return--more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life--

Hux froze when he heard another sound of metal crunching, bam, bam, bam, one after another. 

Like someone was punching the outside of the ship.

Like they would break through.

 

_Hurry._

 

In retrospect, none of it was all that bad.

It was always much more frightening in the moment, of course.

“You’re a child,” Hux said simply, when Ren brought up the subject of the monstrous freak-out, the anger that Ren had felt in being--rejected. Though Hux insisted it wasn’t a rejection of Ren himself, just a rejection of the wild. They were back at Hux’s study, where the table had first come up all that time ago. Hux ran his fingers along the smooth surface of the table, half-wishing that Ren had never found himself in that mine of onyx. Hux had explained that he was like a purebred animal, a domesticated beast. He would not be able to live so long in the woods. 

“I’m not a child.” Ren’s eyes flashed with something unreadable. “I’m something different altogether.”

“Whatever you say.”

When Hux had been rescued, there had been seven dents in the side of Hux’s shuttle, where he had been taking shelter. All in a row. Ren had been asleep, wilting and weary, in Hux’s lap for ninety minutes by the time rescue had arrived. “Be gentle with him,” Hux had said. “Thank the stars he’s been found.”

Some part of Hux had been worried he would never come back, but he had. Physically and mentally.

Mostly.

“You know I meant what I said,” Ren told him, cutting his food with fork and knife crossed, the epitome of civilized. As if he’s not suggesting they go back to the wild.

“You know I meant what _I_ said,” Hux retorts. “That isn’t what I want.”

“But you want me.”

“Yes.”

“I could have it all, Hux. If you came--”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Not even briefly?”

“You’d do what you did last time.”

Ren’s silence is its own confirmation.

“You’d keep me from leaving,” Hux goes on.

“Would that be so terrible?” Ren asks, softly. “I’d be--I’d be yours.”

“You’d be your own, and we both know it.”

It was true, but it didn’t change anything. Hux said he’d think about it. 

Part of him knows he is weak, that he would follow Ren anywhere, if he had to make the choice. Part of him knows he called for help knowing Ren would come back to him, that Ren wouldn’t get hurt at any point. Part of him was maddeningly flattered by the seven dents in the ship, proof of Ren’s ferocious, awful love.


End file.
